


in this we are alone and not alone.

by ProjectFYERBIRD



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Body snatching, Child Death, F/F, Ghost Drifting, Gore, Heart-to-Heart, Possession, but its gonna suck first, having your consciousness strangled to death by a dying kaiju is NOT a fun time, it gets happy I swear, the summary is not sexy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-05-04 15:11:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14595744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProjectFYERBIRD/pseuds/ProjectFYERBIRD
Summary: she is falling, brought low by the humans in their metal shell, then she is hitting the earth. and then she is pouring her consciousness into one of the insects, her body suddenly tiny and frail and weak where she used to be armoured and feared and deadly.(au where at the last minute otachi uses her tongue to take over a human's body.)





	1. when you hit the ground it feels like a feather.

**Author's Note:**

> what's up i made this au (informally called 'otachi eats carrot sticks') on discord where otachi placed herself in a human body and hangs around the shatterdome, and my friends and i ran with it until it grew into this.

She was dying. And falling. Falling down, down, down, plummeting to the hard unforgiving earth the creators were trying so hard to pry from the sickeningly warm grip of the fleshy insects. Unforgiving it was, for how many of her kind had died and soiled its lands and its waters? How many of its children had they killed, crushed beneath their feet or their claws or the buildings they toppled and sent crashing to the ground? And now she would join her predecessors in death, enacting her final act of revenge when she fell from the world, poisoning the soil and the water where she died. A final, grand gesture to leave her species' mark on this ball of dirt and water and concrete.

The wind screamed in her ears as she fell, bleeding blue and trailing internal organs from the gaping wound in her torso. Her tail was a stub that radiated something so cold it burned. Her wings were crumpled and useless. One of them was hanging on only by a handful of thick strands of muscle and ligaments.

She had felt the sword slice through her body with painful and sickening clarity, spilling her acidic blood and organs into the planet's inner atmosphere. Her claws had released the metal shell the insects had made for themselves, allowing it to plummet back down to the earth with her. She fell without control of her movement, at the mercy of the wind. She was, for all intensive purposes, trapped in her own failing body. All she hoped for was that the insects, in their own metal body, would die as painful a death as she would. A great vindictive pleasure welled within her at the thought of the planet below killing its own children, and the feeling was mirrored and doubled back to her by the Hivemind. Infantcide by -

by -

_mother nature. mother/singing/gone/why-did-you-leave-i-was-only-a-child. nature. plants/animals/mammals/insects/birds/reptiles/amphibians/frogs/salamanders/newtsnewtnewt_

**_newt_ **

Her Hivemind dragged her out of the self-contained, false Hive the insect had created. The anger was still there when she resurfaced and shook off the residual memories-that-weren't-her-memories. The anger was always there. Anger and pain and _loss_.

They had killed the other she had been sent with. He was dead now, gone, _gonegonegonegone_

_gonegonegonegonegonegonegone_

**g on e**

His loss echoed mournfully in the Hivemind.

She had failed her mission. The voice she had been sent to find had not wanted her, had run from her with the other insects, hiding itself under the ground and concrete to get away from her. Interesting how one so excited to meet the Hivemind had so quickly hidden itself away and reeked of fear.

Humans were such fickle creatures.

She remembered how its mind had felt when it brushed against the Hivemind, so tiny and small, like a rock in an ocean. Vague impressions of _anxiety/apprehension/excitement_ had made her stir in her holding pod before she was dragged into what the human mind had called the Drift. A series of images tinged in blue flashed by her vision, tumultuous and shaky. A thousand voices answered the call in a thundering roar, responding with their own images. And then it was all over, and they were dragged back into their own bodies.

But it was no matter now.

For better or for worse, it would all be over soon.

The Hivemind was a comforting press at the base of her skull, whispering comfort in a thousand voices as she fell, fell, fell. As the ground rushed up to meet her she was struck with the sudden urge to return home, to the scent of ammonia and sulfur, to a sun like looked like a fiery eye in a sky that burned red. Suddenly, she didn't want to die. She wanted to live, if not for her then for the little thing she carried inside her body.

And then she hit the ground.

Lifeblood and acid spilled from her mouth as the dust settled. Her breathing was laboured, sputtering out of lungs about to give in to death  and collapse. Frothing saliva flecked with blood ran down the sides of her broken jaws. She struggled weakly to move, to get her legs under her body so she go back home. Her body gave a painful shudder and refused to move. A body that has almost been sheared in half and shattered limbs that had been bent the wrong way was all she had to work with. She was going to die.

Movement caught her attention.

There was something warm and tiny standing in front of her head. She focused on it with a predatory clarity in her eyes, a clarity that should have been possible, not in her condition. But her kind had been built to endure. Her poison blue eyes narrowed as she contemplated the thing standing so close to her jaws. It was pale and tiny and warm, with thin gangly limbs that had no armour to speak of. There were no spikes running down its spines, no hooked claws at the end of its grasping limbs. The creature's primative circulative pump sped up. The Hivemind pressed more insistently at her mind. She opened her mouth, and the smell of ammonia filled the air. Her tongue exited her gaping maw, glowing bright bright blue, and wrapped around the frail parasite.

It tasted like salt and copper, and she felt the beat of its chest pump and the circulatory system against her the sensitive flesh of her tongue. Tendrils that ended in glowing bulbous sensory organs wrapped around the little creature tighter and tighter.

It screamed shrilly and beat upon the stinking, wet flesh with its clawless grasping appendages. Its voice was tinny in her ears, and sounded far away. She ignored it. The Hivemind pressed more and more now, a sharp icy pain in her left eye.

_nonono n ononose lfwillbealonealoneifselfdoes this nonononononono_

_**sto p** _

She ignored that too.

The Hivemind was a painful pulse of icy fear at the back of her mind. She understood why they were afraid. They had lost others to death before. They had lost so many to death. Death would hurt, for awhile, but they would move on. They always did. Their lives did not afford them time to mourn extensively for their fallen. But this would be different. She wouldn't be dead, she'd be gone. Gone, not dead. Severed from the Hivemind but still there, still alive, she unable to reach them or them her. To them, the not knowing and not being able to reach her, would be worse a fate than dead.

The infant placed inside her squirmed, reaching out to her mind. She felt a bloom of rare affection in her chest, but even that was slowly fading as she slipped away. She suddenly felt a great, deep, sadness for the tiny creature. Foolishly, she had thought that she and her little one would have lived.

The infant reached out her to her, snagging one of the words the voice had left imprinted in her mind.

_mother_

_mothermotherwheredoyougoaloneiwillbea lone_

_dontgodontgopleasepleasestaywithmediewithme_

**MOTHER**

The bulbs of her tongue glowed brighter as she began the transfer of her consciousness into the frail creature. The weight of her mind smothered that of the insect, crushing it, taking it into her hands and squeezing until something gave way. The Hivemind drained away as she passed from her dying body. Her body gave a final shuddering gurgle and fell into a seizure, shuddering as her muscles seized. Saliva mixed in with the blood pooling beneath her head. And then her body fell still.


	2. bury me face down with the sinners and the saints.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the infant wants revenge and bites off more than she can chew. newt only realises how much he stepped in it when it is about to bite off his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: heavy description of fictional gore, death, and mental trauma.

_**MOTHER** _

The infant reached out with claws that suddenly felt too big, too clumsy, as she tried to snag the unraveling threads of her mother's connection to the Hive. They eluded her grasp and her mother faded away, a wall that burned so hot it felt like ice when she brushed against it coming up between them. She screamed on anguish and rage, raking her claws down the icy barrier, bashing her fists against it, slamming her entire body against it until the pain was too much for her little body to handle and she was only able to scream. Her left eye did not feel like an eye anymore - it had dissolved into a spike of cold pain, like someone had stabbed it with a shadow. Blood leaked out of her nose in a slow trickle, running down her stubby snout and puddling along the short sharp teeth of her lower jaw. She ran her tongue along the points, licking them clean of her own fluids. It tasted both bitter and sweet at the same time.

The Hivemind reached out to her, whispering comfort to her in a thousand voices that layered upon each other like strands of muscle tissue attached to the structure of bone. They soothed away the stabbing pain in her eye, washing it away in the low buzzing drone of their conversation. She curled into herself further, pressing her arms and legs into her soft, unscaled body. She wished she could stay there forever, still warm and safe and surrounded by the familiar scent of her mother. But the flesh around her was already beginning to grow cold and stiff and the smell of rot was already piercing through the membrane of her mother's womb.

Up ahead, she could hear the wet squelch of footprints and the chittering voices the humans spoke in. She shifted uneasily, fitful in her gesture. Little lights danced across the inside of her mother's body, moving across her prone form. The longer she lay there, listening to the pitch of their voices and the crackle of their communication devices and the wet sounds of their footsteps, the angrier she became. Her emotions and those of the Hive festered until the pit of her stomach and the hollow of her chest bubbled with liquid rage. She pressed her stubby head against the membrane surrounding her, pushing until she could see the vague outline of a group of yellow silhouettes clustered together through the thin vein-webbed curtain of flesh.

These were the insects who had killed her mother, cut her from the air and forced her to seclude herself away and leave the Hive, leave  _her_. And now they were here to take her, to cut her out of her mother and crush her with their metal shell.

She understood what she had to do now. She would kill them all. She would snap their bones in her jaws, tear them apart with her claws, soil the inside of her mother with their blood. She would spill their organs in front of them, watch as horror and fear flashed in their eyes before the life drained from them.

Her sharp little talons parted the membrane like it was barely there, and fresh blood rained down in droplets that splattered across her body. She untucked herself with agility belied by her premature looking body, and lashed out with frightening speed. The first fell with its guts at its feet, ropes of red and pink flesh falling out of the gaping wound in its torso as it collapsed to its knees. The yellow covering it wore ripped like it was made of nothing at all, and air hissed as it escaped from its plastic confines. The bottom half of it bulged unnaturally as the creature's innards gathered there.

Streaked with red and blue gore and with strips of human flesh still clinging to her claws, she sank her teeth into the insect closest to her. As she punctured its second skin, air hissed out from the holes. Her teeth scraped across its ribcage before she crunched through the frail bones. Its blood tasted thin and bitter and sour but it was enough to slake her thirst for vengeance and death. Leaving the creature to die with its broken ribcage bared as it gurgled and coughed up blood, she moved onto the third.

It was only then that she realised that it was not only they that were screaming, in their shrill little voices. She herself was screeching as she tore through them, and continued to do so as she pounced on the third insect and bit its head off. Despite the bitter, sour taste, she swallowed it. Blood spurted from the arteries in its exposed jugular, painting the squishy ground purple as it mixed with the acidic Kaiju blood. The fourth had its neck snapped as she batted it across the cavity. It slumped forward and did not move after it had slammed into a piece of exposed pelvis bone with a sickening snap. For a moment she rested, split tongue lolling out of her mouth as she panted, observing the carnage and death she had wrought. And then she was ploughing forward, dragging herself along the inside of her mother's corpse, still screeching as she reached the entrance the humans had created.

She tumbled out into the open air, tail over head, spilling out on the concrete in a rush of blood and screaming.

* * *

The death site of the Kaiju -  _Otachi_ , her name was  _Otachi_   - was already crowded with Hannibal's black market workers when they arrived in a sleek, black car. The dust hadn't settled, and Hannibal clicked his tongue as he eyed the now blemished finish. His shoes rattled as he walked, the gold segments clinking together. The sound was drowned out by the ever present chatter of the site. They dodged piles of rubble, which harvesters combed through for skin parasites. Someone passed them, carrying a squealing parasite. The milky opalescent creature kicked it's many segmented legs out in protest. 

Newt looked out on the scene laid out before him as he and Hannibal began walking.

He was self-aware enough to realise how odd he looked, what with his dirt smeared and tattered clothing and his cracked glasses and his still mildly haemorrhaged left eye. All the while he was hovering over the shoulder of Hong Kong's most infamous crime bosses, twitchy and jittery. 

Black market harvesters were swarming Otachi like ants, clambering on haphazardly constructed scaffolding. A web of ropes fell over her sides and stretched across the open air like a bizarre facsimile of a spider's web, only instead of high strength silk it was comprised of fraying twine that was very much not immune to the acid blood possessed by the Kaiju. Some did not bother with the rope rigs, free climbing the downed Kaiju like a cliff face as they found foot and handholds in the rough scales. A collection of generators hummed as they provided power to the multitude of spotlights shining bright white light over the surrounding area. Those who lay out of the spotlights' reach wore head mounted flashlights, and Newt saw them as little dots of light on the top of her, or in the distant rubble of the ruined section of city.

"I still can’t believe what you did to me, I mean I could have been eaten!" Newt said, walking faster to compensate for Hannibal's strides.

"That was definitely the plan," Hannibal muttered sourly, viewing the other man from the corner of his eye. "Lucky for you, that didn’t become necessary."

A gash the width of Lady Danger's chain sword sluggishly bled blue, the blood slowly dripping down the side of the wound before coagulating in a puddle on the concrete. The flesh underneath the tough scaly armour glowed faintly purplish from the inside. A tangle of industrial tubing and hoses had been fed into the cut, and curled in a pile next to their connected oxygen and carbon dioxide tanks.

Newt hovered over Hannibal's shoulder, either unaware or uncaring of the man's annoyance with it. (In reality, it was a bit of both.)

Rolling his eyes he said: "Thank you so much. You’re so kind, I really appreciate all of this. But now do you mind telling me exactly what is taking so long for your workers to get that brain?"

He was a ball of jittery anxiety and adrenaline and Ghost-Drifting, barely held together by sheer force of will and unable to stop moving. He was rocking back and forth on his heels. His hands were shaking. He figured it was left over from being chased down a street and nearly eaten (or kidnapped, because her orders weren't very clear) by a Kaiju, but he also chalked some of it up to leftover side effects from drifting with the damaged segment of Mutavore's secondary brain. The Ghost-Drift was still active and hellish inside his mind too, his head lapsing into a feedback loop of the worst possible tangle of emotions. Anger. Pain. Confusion. _Loneliness_.

He yanked himself back just in time to hear the other man's response, before he got lost in the Ghost-Drift and drifted along untethered.

"Well, they pump the cavity full of CO2, just like in any other laparosopic surgery - "

" - yes, obviously, the CO2’s gonna delay the acidic reaction, yes." He interrupted, impatient as to where this could be going. He needed that brain, Pentecost needed that brain, humanity as they knew it needed that brain.

" - and it allows us to harvest it. But our boys need oxygen pumped into their suits, so they move slowly." Hannibal finished, giving Newt a look that probably could have been translated to 'given the opportunity I will put my knife up your nose again.'

Hannibal pulled out a walkie-talkie, an old black brick of a thing, and spoke into it. "What’s going on in there, boys?" Newt leaned in so he could listen. Faintly, he could hear the voices speaking from the walkie-talkie. A mix of Mandarin and English crackled through the speaker, and he recognized the voice of the man who had initially greeted him in the small store that served as Hannibal's front for his black market Kaiju deals.

"We’ve reached the upper pelvic area, moving to the twenty fifth vertebrae," a voice laced in faint static said. Newt could imagine the look on the man's when he followed up with: "Even with the suit, boss, it smells like dead catfish in here."

He was vaguely aware of the squelching sounds they made as they walked, and worked to tune them out to listen to the converation. After few minutes, the man spoke again, but there was a pause before the man before he started to speak, his voice hesitant and disappointed. "Boss, the secondary brain . . . it is damaged. Looks like some sort of fluid. Could be petroleum."

Newt felt his heart drop to the soles of his muddy shoes, a pit of hardened disappointment forming in his stomach. He joined in with Hannibal's swearing, cursing as violently as the crime lord did and digging his nails into his palm until it hurt. He felt like he was going to cry. He bit his lip. All of that, for nothing? Being chased down a street by a Kaiju he knew was after him, being subjected to the crush of panicked civilians shoving him to the side to get a few feet further away from the monster behind, being dug out of the shelter like an insect - and that was what the Kaiju saw them as anyways: insects. Because they screamed and crunched when they got underfoot and ran and -

He was pulled from his downward spiral by a "Wait, wait," spoken in English and a smattering of nervous Mandarin from the other three inside the dead Kaiju

"What was that?" He said, voice bordering on hysterical, as he grabbed for the walkie-talkie. He succeeded, but only held it for a handful of seconds before it was snatched back by a perturbed Hannibal. "Why wait?" He asked before the device was taken.

The old man spoke again, this time to the workers and the pair on the outside. "Do you hear that? It's like a heartbeat."

He stole the walkie-talkie again, backpedalling from Hannibal before he could take it away. "Oh my God. No, this can't be. Hold on." Hannibal tried to grab the walkie-talkie and he smacked his hand, walking somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere where Hannibal wasn't trying to grab at him as he came to what was, quite frankly, a genius realisation.

"Hey, let me have that," he snarled.

Newt shushed him, simultaneously shoving him away and drawing him closer. "Listen, listen. Listen to this."

_Ba bump. Ba bump. Ba bump._

Even with the excitement of being right, because he _had_ told them Kaiju might have the ability to reproduce, hadn't he, something very very cold dripped down his spine, raising the hairs at the back of his neck. Million year old instincts chirped their alarm, sending fear skittering up and down the length of his back. 

"It's pregnant."

Hannibal turned on a dime to face him, golden shoes rattling as he advanced on him. " _What_?" He yelled. He looked ready to get into argument right then and there, which Newt almost respected but at the same time really, really did not want to deal with at that moment.

On the walkie-talkie, he could hear the screams of dying men and the screaming of something else. Newt felt sick again, and tasted the bitterness of bile (right, he hadn't eaten at all today) crawl into the back of his throat. 

Seconds later, a screaming, scaly thing covered in the blood of her mother and the blood of the men who had been inside pulled itself free, rolling over itself as it tumbled to the ground. Even as she tripped over the umbilical cord wrapped around her body she launched herself forward on under developed legs like the world's most horrifying and deadliest newly hatched bird. He looked her in the eye and saw himself through her gaze, a fragile little thing standing dumbly as the other insects ran away. It would be so easy to rip it into shreds for killing her mother and entering the Hive and _defiling_ it with it's disgusting fleshy mind-touch. Anger that wasn't his bloomed in his chest and that was what urged him to start running, running for his life because even a baby Kaiju was more than a match for him. 

The infant screamed, and tore her way towards him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THREE HUNDRED YEARS LATER......
> 
> anyways i hope you enjoyed this chapter! please remember to leave kudos and maybe a comment! that'd be very sexy of you.


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